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Posted on March 16, 2024

The Fawn Response – A New Way of Thinking about Folk Horror

Guest Post

JDC Burnhil

Anyone who attempts to devise a definition of “folk horror” quickly discovers how peculiarly exasperating the task is. As much as readers and critics may agree that certain works definitely belong to the corpus – as much as we may sense that the corpus is bound by a common spirit – the bewildering variety of twists folk horror can take makes it difficult to confidently identify the key elements.

What is proposed in this essay is that, in fact, a majority of folk horror draws on a common root for its power and relevance, and that this connection has gone largely unappreciated before now. Moreover, it makes sense of the bewildering variety we just mentioned: in a very real sense, folk horror’s spirit may be defined less by “these are the boundaries it fits within” than “these are the boundaries it defiantly straddles.”

Posted on March 8, 2024

Children of the Corn: Where Fritz Kiersch’s 1984 Adaptation Gets It Right – and Wrong

Dawn Keetley

Fritz Kiersch’s adaptation of Stephen King’s 1977 short story, “Children of the Corn,” was released in the US on March 9, 1984. It’s one of my favorite Stephen King adaptations (somewhere in the top ten) – and its many strengths notably include an early starring role for the amazing Linda Hamilton, seven months before she appeared in the career-shaping The Terminator. It’s also a critical entry in the US folk horror tradition, defining (along with Mary Lambert’s 1989 Pet Semetary) what American folk horror looked like in the 1980s. On the film’s 40^th anniversary, here’s an assessment of some of the ways Kiersch’s Children of the Corn effectively interpreted and adapted King’s story – and a couple of the film’s missteps.

Posted on June 26, 2021

Memories Worth Keeping: Adaptational Changes in IT: Chapter 2

Guest Post

Stephen King’s IT – and, later, the Andy Muschietti adaptations – have been vital to my journey as a horror fan and an aspiring fantasy/horror writer, and as an important way to think about change. I read IT during the summer of 2018, after moving from the home I had lived in for 12 years. While I approached the novel thinking I had hit the jackpot of horror, I found myself more moved by the strong bond that the Losers’ Club formed as adolescents, which made the disintegration of these friendships in adulthood all the more tragic. In many ways, IT shares more DNA with Stand By Me (a non-horror adaptation, based on King’s short story “The Body”) than some of his other horror novels. Both works are coming-of-age stories that see seemingly unshakeable friendships tested by fears and anxieties – some are explicitly horror-related, such as Pennywise, but others are more existential: how long will we remain friends? Adulthood, in these stories, seems to be more of a source of horror – or, at least, anxiety – than any monster or bully, and yet when it comes, it happens gradually. Adulthood’s arrival is not heralded by ominous music or a jumpscare, it just… happens, and childhood friendships that seemed strong don’t always last. Read more

Posted on June 17, 2021

Carrie White as Witchcraft, Power and Fear

Guest Post

In our hands: embers embers embers
just waiting for
the opportunity
to ignite

-Amanda Lovelace, The Witch Doesn’t Burn in This One (53)

The Witch in Popular Culture

In the twenty-first century, literature and film have demonstrated a compulsion to return to the figure of the witch. Witches are embedded in popular culture old and new. From the folkloric enchantresses Baba Yaga, Circe, and Morgan Le Fay to the fairytale hags who eat, kidnap, and murder children in stories such as Hansel and Gretel, Rapunzel, and Snow White, the witch is designed to reinforce men’s fear and abhorrence towards women. Modern media, however, continues to challenge the witch as a figure of absolute terror and evil. What happens, for example, when the witch is a child herself? Portrayals of the “goodhearted” child-as-witch emerged and took centre-stage in stories such as Harry Potter (2001-11) and Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (2018). But before Hermione and Sabrina, there was Stephen King’s Carrie White.

Posted on April 3, 2021

Stephen King’s LATER: A Review

Guest Post

I started absorbing Stephen King before I was born. When she was pregnant with me, my mom distracted herself with two equally consuming tasks: stitching future-me a small quilt (despite very little knowledge or skill related to sewing) and reading the serial installments of The Green Mile, published between March and August of 1996. She spun my future with fabric squares—painstakingly arranged for comfort—and whatever textures might be taken from the echoes of chants and shaking chains on a fictional death row. Manufactured, destroyable dread was the invisible thread connecting the balloon to the toy block to the yellow background.

Now, it’s 2021 and I’m an adult who does my own grocery shopping and I see a new paperback on a display at Costco and I throw it into my cart before any food. King’s latest (aptly titled Later) is a compelling, genre-mash and in many ways, one of King’s most honest stories. Read more